CPO Projection This Week. Receiving positive sentiment support, the price of crude palm oil (CPO) rose 5.6% over the past week, and reached its highest level since 22 April. CPO even records an increase in five consecutive days, or the CPO price of the October delivery contract at Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange (BMDEX) terminates trade Friday at the level of MYR2,179/ton (USD520.92/ton). US and China trade war peace expectations, and Malaysia’s increase in exports drove the price to increase.
White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow said that the US President, Donald Trump, still wanted to continue the trade dialogue and opened the possibility to make space on the easing of China’s import duty. The fact is we still want to negotiate. We planned to invite the Chinese negotiator team to come to Washington in September. Everything can change with respect to tariffs, Kudlow said.
The Kudlow statement signals that trade dialogue between the world’s two biggest economic strengths is still not over and can be positive.
Responding to the price of US soybean oil is rising, and also in the price of CPO. Over the last week, US soybean oil prices recorded a 4.5% hike.
Soybean oil is a true rival of palm oil, where all functions of palm oil can be replaced by soybean oil. So soybean price movement will usually affect the price of CPO.
CPO Projection This Week: The challenge for CPO this week, as the Malaysian Exchange holidays on Monday (08/12) and just open again on Tuesday trade. The challenge for the CPO price seems to be quite heavy in this week, the US and China trade war seems to be returning to heat. President Trump said the US will not make a trade deal, although China wants to do it.
Meanwhile, President Trump’s trading adviser, Peter Navaro, said the US would take a crackdown if it continued to depreciation his currency. Obviously, China manipulated its currency from a trading standpoint, says Navaro. If they continue to do so, the US will take crackdown on them, Navaro added.
On the other hand, over the last week the Chinese government did not comment a lot, even when there was no single statement out of the relevant officials when the US began to show goodwill, as presented by Kudlow who still wanted to do Trade negotiations. The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) continues to depreciation the yuan rate against the USD.
On Monday (08/05) PBoC surprised the global market by depreciation of the yuan rate to the weakest level in over the last decade, or precisely since December 2008. Since that time, PBoC weakens the yuan exchange rate against the USD, last Friday the middle value is set at 7.01/USD.
The US and China trade war issue would still be a major sentiment in this week, amdist China’s reported a spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said that the companies had ceased purchase agricultural products from US. To dim the expectation of trade talks will certainly suppress the price of soybean oil, and can have an impact on the CPO price.
At the beginning of trading the CPO will likely get positive sentiments from the increase in Malaysia exports. Data from AmSpec Malaysia showed that Malaysia’s exports in the early August week jumped 39.1% to 511,756 tonnes, compared to the same period in July 367,950 tonnes. Meanwhile, Malaysia will report on the official export, inventory, and production data for July on Tuesday this week.
The predicted Malaysia palm oil supply has shown an improvement for the first time in the last five months, based on the Reuters survey. The predicted inventory rose 1.8% to 2.47 million tonnes, the production increased 11.4% to 1.69 million tonnes, and exports rose 3.8% to 1.44 million tonnes. The release of these data will also be the CPO drive this week.